Fluffy Desert Snow

Here in Southeast Arizona there are usually a few snowfalls every winter but they generally don’t amount to much, and the sun usually melts away the snow by noon.

On the last day of this year we’ve experienced an exception this morning. Over six inches of light and insubstantial snow is clinging to every surface and the landscape has been transformed.

It’s a conundrum: how does such light and airy snow cling so tenaciously to tree branches? It seems as if the slightest waft of a breeze would tumble these improbable structures into masses of wet white wreckage, but the porous piles continue to accumulate.

An apricot tree made a pleasing backdrop for a puzzled cane cholla branch supporting an improbable arc of snow:

The snow emphasized the geometry of clumps of agave:

Two close-up shots of Arizona Cypress foliage peering out of clumps of snow:

Sage, Bev’s young female collie, hasn’t seen much snow in her short life. Bev and Sage are home in Nova Scotia during the summer and therefore miss the Canadian snow every year. At first the collie was afraid to venture out into the deep snow this morning, but after seeing me walk through it unscathed she plunged around the courtyard in wide arcs, eating snow and obviously having a good time:

Lovely pictures, Larry. We got one decent snow, which promptly melted. The rest of the time the scenario around here is as in the following verse. My eldest, who works at Schnucks, calls it the ‘snowpocalypse’ . (grin)

Saint Louis Snow

Head quickly to the grocer’s.
Stock up well on milk and bread.
Also pick up extra eggs this time
Cause weather guys have said
On Channels Two and Four and Five
And also on Eleven.
That a snowstorm is arriving.
And we’ll be prepared, by Heaven.

Be sure to get some snowmelt
And pick up another shovel
And batteries. If lights go out
I don’t want any trouble
With plowing through
Great mounds of snow
To find they are all gone
Then sitting in the dark all night
And praying for the dawn.

The walks have all been salted.
We have food now for a swarm.
A fire is in the fireplace
Just to keep us extra warm.
Now quite prepared for everything
We might need in a pinch.
The snow arrived,
We got almost a 16th of an inch.